


One of the Ways We Show Our Age

by CrookedRain_CrookedRain (OurFontIsBigger)



Category: Cricket RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 18:15:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14454996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OurFontIsBigger/pseuds/CrookedRain_CrookedRain
Summary: 'Well you needn't frown at us like that, Graham, it's not that unbelievable that someone’d fancy you.’





	One of the Ways We Show Our Age

**Author's Note:**

  * For [labonnetouche](https://archiveofourown.org/users/labonnetouche/gifts).



> For my bunny, the one true bun, for her bday because she enjoys gentle things and mornings after. Love you <3
> 
>  
> 
> // Standard Disclaimer //
> 
> This is a work of fiction and not intended to represent or speculate on the real lives of any person, it's just using their likenesses to write a story.

It was six am and Bunny had one eye open. All the remnants of last night starting to stir up inside him like silt in a river, flushing the length of his nerves and veins, settling heavy in his stomach. There, on the sofa in his living room he lay with Mark asleep on him. The tv was still on from last night, breakfast news now, the volume too low to hear. Bunny couldn’t move. He didn’t want to move because time was sweeping on, moving in a big arc with the sun. Not much left for this; the warmth of Mark’s body and the way Bunny’s arm rest possessively across his shoulders, holding him against his chest. 

But soon Mark would wake up, soon he’d be telling him how it was _nice that, a bit of fun but it was a mistake,_ wasn’t it? Just something that happens within the blurred boundaries of night when Bunny could’ve been anyone. Mark following a feeling hitched in him like tugging on a rope. Like a blind animal instinct. Bunny was already rehearsing what he’d say, how he’d be - calm, steady and appropriate. How he’d tell Mark it was alright. He was right, he was. It’s better to be mates. You don’t know what’s on the other side do you? Can’t just get in to it like jumping off a cliff and hoping for the best, hoping there's no sharp rocks to dash yourself on and anyway the view from up here is beautiful. The morning come like the tide, like the rising flood to sweep away the sofa in oceans of blue grey light. Through all the watchful hours Bunny had waited, dozing fitfully, Mark still there, head on Bunny’s chest and his expression squished between comic and open-mouthed vulnerable. His arm a dead-weight across Bunny’s stomach as Bunny’s mouth got dry and he regretted the sixth, the seventh pint. Headache rolling in like the dawn, throbbing as the birds started haranguing each other. It was June and the summer had been unfolding itself, soaking every drop of sun out the big northern sky. The light was coming on now, teasing, promising what a fine day it was going to be if only Bunny would get off the sofa.

In the kitchen he walked slowly, aimlessly, opening cabinets with no sense of what he was looking for, rubbing his back, head feeling fragile and papery. He’d left Mark on the sofa, on his front, arm caught under his body in a way that’d probably hurt when he woke up but Bunny didn’t dare move him. Just watched him for a minute, like he was taking his fill of that too. Bunny opened the back door and sat on the doorstep, looking out on the garden, the shifting light climbing the fence, marching through blades of grass. Mark was going to wake up, he was going to come in to the kitchen and Bunny could already feel the excruciating awkwardness of it, spread through the pins of his shoulder blades, gathered and hunched there. His feet rest on the cool concrete, behind his back, for now, only the empty kitchen. The provisional quiet, cupboards, sink, cooker, table and chairs filling the space in their own way but no Mark. Not yet. Just now, just at this moment there was time to hold it all inside himself; the brush of their lips against each other, the stumbling hesitant start, how his cold fingers had made Mark shiver up under his t-shirt. You could catch your breath on a feeling like that. He stretched his legs out to touch grass wet with dew, it couldn’t be later than seven am. 

When Bunny was twenty-six he’d made Ian Bell a mixtape. It wasn’t even a mixtape, it was a mix-cd, that was the problem. It wasn’t like when he was a teenager, not like the old days, the devotional whirring of the tape deck, the manual labour of pressing buttons with a satisfying mechanical click, getting a perfect pause between tracks. Run it on, wind it back. Even better if you used a record player, all that delicate hovering, timed needle drop and hit record. Dragging and ordering mp3 files into a playlist you ended up feeling like really you’d made nothing at all. Not surprising then that Ian had reacted the way he did, with a sort of polite bafflement, _oh uh, thanks Graham._ And Bunny couldn’t remember why he’d even done it or why it seemed so important to give him something, like he was trying to make something manifest. How Ian made him feel dislocated somehow. How he’d talk to him and then after not quite remember what they’d been talking about, but he’d think about his strong freckly arms and it would make a kind of sense. You could be bisexual even you’d not often heard anyone say the word out loud. Maybe it was like with Mark, looking was enough until it wasn’t, like surfacing and taking big gulps of air, only so long you can keep your head under water. 

Bunny was up now. Up and dragging parts of last night around the kitchen with him. The first part; Mark driving him home, thoughts of how he shouldn’t drink around him, it only made it worse - the wanting. Watching Mark’s face as he drove, light sluicing across it from passing cars or streetlights, yellow and orange and making running shadows. It had been raining and Mark’s body was held slightly taught, narrow shoulders and careful, clever hands on the wheel. Drinking dulled the guilt Bunny would feel sober, flattened it right out and left him alone with all his helpless scurrying feelings. The second part; falling asleep on the sofa together watching Match of the Day and waking the wrong side of midnight to eerie flickering tv light and Mark’s head heavy on his shoulder. He’d carefully nudged Mark up, whispering _hey, Mark, Woody lad, wake up._ Mark had slowly lifted his head and he’d looked that beautiful just then, on the cusp of waking, like a faint transmission filtering in, getting stronger and more distinct. The magic of some jumpy little in-between state in Mark’s soft mouth and his sleepy eyes. So Bunny had kissed him. Gently, so aware of every sound, the tv, Mark’s breathing, his own.

In the kitchen he leant against the countertop, stirring milk into tea, watching a blackbird on the fence out in the garden and thinking about the third part. Kissing, _the taste of Mark’s mouth_ and _t-shirt almost off_ and _half-asleep we were, got all tangled up._ Stirring his tea and thinking _what if I went back in and kissed him awake?_ But also thinking _god I’ve embarrassed meself enough for one day._ Getting a battered box of aspirin out of the cutlery drawer. At one point last night he’d panicked and said one or several shameful things like he felt a horrible urge to give a commentary on what was happening. Drunk and dopey and trying to jump right out of his body and say _ha! Can’t believe I’m doing this!_ Giving it some distance like he wasn’t slopping love all over the place. 

 

 

Mark came in eventually, inevitably, shuffling feet when the sun had snuck up higher, quiet as a church mouse and wrapped in the blanket off the sofa. Quiet enough that Bunny - returned to his back doorstep - didn’t realise until Mark was right behind him, startling him. He couldn't quite make his face settle into one expression, jittery heartbeat and words coming out like he’d rarely spoken before.

‘Oh! Mark.’

‘Well identified,’ Mark said, sitting down. Sat right next to him, close enough that his knee pressed to Bunny’s, looking at him and smiling, little half-smile, the blanket up around his shoulders protectively, considering.

In the garden the bees were waking, buzzing in their wavery way from flower to flower. Later on in the day they’d be wobbling, making drunken laden loops. Being injured in June felt like bunking off school. Soon the lads would be arriving at the Riverside in dribs and drabs, yawning into the morning light in the dressing room, kicking kit and taking places. Chatting while Colly would be readying himself for a bit of a speech, all his fight-for-the-lads, do-it-for-the-North-East stirring up inside him while little Scotty looked on adoringly. Hoping like they all were for the first win of the season. Bunny always wanted to dislike Colly more than he actually did. But Bunny wasn’t at the Riverside, he was at home, on his back doorstep and Mark was sat next to him, skiving too. Ruffled hair and a thumbprint of dark circle under each eye, still walking cautious on one ankle and Bunny nudged him.

‘You want some tea, lad?’ he said quietly, waving his mug, eyes slowly slipping the perfect long line of Mark’s nose to his mouth. Mark shook his head.

‘I’m alright for now.’

He nudged Bunny back and stayed there, almost but not quite leaning against him. 

‘So - uh -’ Mark said and he was grinning at Bunny now, ‘last night like.’ He raised his eyebrow. Big beautiful smile he had, Bunny sort of dazed and worried in equal measure. Those long eyelashes too, huge eyes, everything made Bunny feel sticky and stupid. All those greedy looks he’d been taking at Mark’s face.

‘God, yeah - sorry -’ Bunny said quickly, smiling back a bit helplessly.

Mark shook his head, big grin still. ‘No - no - last night you said you were - a bit in love with us but I -uh - didn’t have to do anything about it - so uh - y’know - not to worry.’

Bunny slowly lowered his head to his knees, blood draining and pooling rapidly in his feet as Mark started to laugh. ‘Oh God -’ he mumbled.

‘No! Oh no, Graham, mate, I thought that was proper lovely of you, that was, very considerate like -’ Bunny felt Mark’s arm come to rest on his shoulders, drawing the blanket around him, pulling him in, ‘I do enjoy being propositioned in a very polite way.’ Mark was still laughing.

‘Can you not just fuck off and leave us to me shame?’ Bunny said into his knees, laughing too in spite of himself. But Mark was leaning in, laughing and pressing his nose against Bunny’s cheek.

‘You’re an idiot, you are,’ he said quietly and Bunny nodded, heart sputtering as Mark carefully kissed his cheek then his temple. 

‘I am, I am -’ Bunny said, Mark’s hand stroking his back and Bunny was lifting his head slowly to Marks quickening breath. Mark kissed his forehead and he felt like he was sinking, giving in but pulling back just in time to remember:

‘The neighbours!’ He gestured vaguely across the way to the houses overlooking his garden and Mark pulled the blanket up over both their heads, trapping them in a stale darkness. Bunny laughed, hands on Mark’s body to orientate himself, finding his face and a sharp breath in when Mark kissed his fingers.

‘Not sure this looks any less suspicious like,’ Bunny mumbled, stroking Mark’s jaw, stubble scratching his fingers.

‘Don’t care. Not our fault your neighbours ‘ve got dirty minds.’ Bunny could hear the smile in his voice, he felt full of cracks, open and tender with light. Mark kissed him then, plucking any last settlings of anxiety right out of his body. Firm and pressing him up against the doorframe, hard line aching his back and their fast breathing dragging the oxygen from the air until Bunny felt dizzy with it. Tugged the blanket off their heads on to the kitchen floor, Mark’s face appearing, all wide eyed and flushed. 

Not like Bunny had never noticed how good looking Mark was before but he’d always tried to make it stay in the part of his mind labelled _neutral observations._ The knowledge kept creeping out though. When Mark was in his kitchen, holding a glass of orange juice and now it was summer the evening light could just skip across him, hit the glass and set it to glow. Leaning more on one leg than the other, tatty bandage on his foot. That mole he had on his cheek like a map marker, _come right here and kiss me_. He should’ve. He knew that now, hindsight, twenty-twenty, all that. And then it crept out on the field when Mark was horsing around, the way he could just bend everything around him, make everyone keep the same manic beat. Even someone as determinedly dour as Bunny. Most of all it was there in the gaps, in all of what was lurking beneath the surface, all the soft-bellied vulnerability. The doubts and the flickering.

Like when Mark was seventeen and he was more eyes than anything else, anxiety spinning in him like a top. At the academy and Bunny had found him once back to the wall gulping air like he was trying to swallow half the world. Bunny had brought him down, though Mark’s pallor and damp hair made him panic himself. He had thought what are all the most calming words I know, how do I set my face and held Mark’s hands firmly like he could get it all in that way. _Does this happen to you often?_ he’d said after and Mark had shook his head. 

It wasn’t like Mark wanted looking after, he was a tough little coil beneath all his whippy emotions but it made Bunny protective of him. They both of them knew what it was like to be brittle, friable bones or a mind apt to get stuck in the mire. Later Mark would stroke the pink corded flesh where they’d cut Bunny’s spine open and inserted a metal screw to hold up the whole crumbling edifice. Sometimes it’s important to touch scars, put hands on all imperfections and make them beautiful by knowing them. Mark’s lips pressed to every notch of bone. Back when it had happened Bunny would dream about it, his spine would collapse and shake loose in his body or he'd feel the metallic bite of the screw, cold, unnatural line, turned too tight and stiffening. He’d wake and for a few seconds not be able to move. Mark, he knew all about the feeling when the fault was yourself, the whole structure of yourself, your body. The endless instruction to just hold yourself differently, put more weight on this part, develop this muscle, _when you hit the ground you can’t. The line is wrong. Through your back. Through your arm._ _The problem is you. If only you weren’t you._

Now there was a criss-crossing that hadn’t been there before. How Bunny had took Mark’s place in the Lions squad in February because Mark had done himself a mischief in the warm up match, side-strain. Bunny was trailed by a mild guilt all the way to Sri Lanka. Not like they were competing against each other, not exactly but he still felt like he’d slipped on to the wrong timeline, on to Mark’s. That Mark should be the young blood in the Lions and then come up to the test team and then came - in his more sentimental moments - the secret close held fantasies about them winning The Ashes together. 

But here they were and Mark was twenty-four and back on his sofa and Mark was saying how actually he’d always liked Bunny, _y’know._ Looked up to him but also collected his praise and attention like going through their conversation with a metal detector, pulling great treasures and mundane artifacts out of the soil. Only natural after all that you’d want to go straight to the source. He’d thought about kissing him, actually. 

'Well you needn't frown at us like that, Graham, it's not that unbelievable that someone’d fancy you -’ 

Bunny made a dismissive noise and then he kissed Mark’s neck. For all that neither of them were particularly fresh from having slept in their clothes, Mark tasted good, salt skin and fidgeting nicely under Bunny’s body. Especially when he kissed the hinge of his jaw.

‘What about, yeah -’ Mark said, recovering himself, ‘what about your girl Lily Allen, what about when you were the talk of TMS, eh? How quickly they forget -’

‘Shhhhh - shut up, you,’ Bunny said grinning and clamping a hand over Mark’s mouth. Mark kissed his palm and pushed his tongue between Bunny’s fingers until he took his hand away and pressed his lips against Mark’s instead, settling next to him on the sofa. Mark stroking his hair back off his face and Bunny telling him to leave off.

‘It’s in retreat - me hairline - it’s retreating.’

Mark shook his head, laughing. ‘No - it’s like very dignified, that.’

‘That’s what happens when you get old. All the grey hair starts coming out and your hairline starts creeping back up your head.’ Bunny waved his hand as if to indicate the kind of cycle this was working on.

Mark held Bunny's face in both his hands and looked at him in as serious a way as he could manage. ‘I know what you look like, yeah - none of this is a surprise to us.’

 

 

They’d gone to bed eventually, in the worn out middle of the day when it seemed like it might be afternoon forever. Bunny had shut the curtains and now the sun was raging at the corners in protest at this show of ungratefulness. Mark was laid next to him, come to a rest in the crumpled sheets and Bunny was looking at the ceiling and telling about how he’d always known but he’d never done anything about it as a teenager, beyond a sort of fitful yearning for the odd straight lad. If you were the type of person who was going to go to university, it felt like there was time for all that later.

‘So you could just wait?’

‘Yeah, y’know, I had a schedule.’

‘A schedule?’ Mark said, laughing.

Bunny pulled a face. ‘Yeah, then Durham offered us a professional contract so -’ he shrugged, ‘what about you?’

‘Well, as you know -’ Mark said, propping himself up on one elbow, facing Bunny, ‘as a true believer - as someone _fully_ committed to the cause -’

‘It’s a good cause -’ 

‘Yeah, I like to think so - anyway I’ve experienced a great many tragic, entirely imaginary love affairs - or at least one very tragic, very imaginary affair - so I would appreciate both your sympathy and your understanding. Especially as I did it all without a schedule.’

Bunny laughed. ‘I’ll do me best,’ he said.

And now it was the way it always was when you’d got someone into your bed. Bunny was trying to close the gap, shift his memories into a new progression to make sense of it. How did we get here? From Mark, his mate, tetchy on the sofa watching the match, restless limbs to this Mark, sheet wound half off his body, head dropped to the pillow and hand stroking Bunny's hair. This Mark who he leant to kiss now, who he pressed into the bed bodily, daring bare skin against skin, a wholly different Sunday afternoon. He’d never known fear could ride around in your veins long enough to turn in to raw electricity at the point of contact. The potential for something else, excitement or joy. Joy like the buttery light spread briefly on Mark’s body when the curtains were blown about by the wind, slipping his fingers down into the warmth, down low on Mark’s belly. Kissing and stopping dizzily to mumble _okay? This alright?_ and Mark’s quiet smile and nodding and saying _yeah it's good yeah._ Mark’s body was all map edge, uncharted. Bunny all pulled into focus like this, every thread of him liable to be examined, trousers unzipped and white thighs and bony knees, every awkward angle. There was no accounting for what someone else would find attractive about you. Mark pulling him closer and muttering ‘Me too, y’know - last night, what you were saying about being a bit in love with us -’ 

‘Oh you’re a bit in love with yourself too?’

‘You know what I mean!’ 

 

After, Bunny stopped with his head on Mark’s chest, hearing the little _bah-bum_ of his heart echoing through his ribs, stroking his side and Mark pressing his lips into Bunny’s hair and mumbling, ‘Wanna eat? I’m hungry. Is it tea time yet?’

‘Dunno,’ Bunny said while Mark scrabbled for his phone on the side table.

‘Near enough,’ he declared. ‘Food? Yeah?’

‘You gonna cook for us?’

‘Yeah, I am actually.’ Mark said, looking through his phone.

‘You are?’ Bunny said, skeptically, raising his head and trying to see what Mark was up to on his phone but Mark pushed Bunny’s head back down and held the phone up to his ear.

‘Who’re you calling?’

‘Me mam - - Hiya, can I order a take-away?’ 

Bunny laughed and whispered, ‘That’s no way to speak to your mam!’ And Mark stroked his hair and went about ordering two large pizzas. 

Behind the curtains the sun showed no sign of giving up it’s grab for attention, although there was a sense of rain on the way, something carried on the wind. It probably wasn’t quite tea time. At the Riverside The Colonel was making a valiant stand against Lancashire. Bunny had reached over and turned the little radio on beside his bed, Durham were 198-8 and the quiet familiar voices of the BBC Radio Newcastle comms team were sifting through the air. Bunny lay back on the bed and pulled Mark up against him, kissed Mark’s head and let his eyes slowly shut. It was fine, he’d wake up in time to stumble downstairs and get the pizzas or else Mark would.

‘Don’t go to sleep,’ he mumbled but Mark didn’t really reply, just tightened his arms around Bunny, and Bunny thought he could hear the sound of a particularly stupid bee who had managed to navigate the curtains and was now buzzing around low to the floor. And he lay there, holding Mark, ungodly happy and working up the energy to rescue it, while outside it started to gently rain. 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [For those who were not aware of the Lily Allen biz ](https://www.express.co.uk/sport/cricket/118588/Onions-is-a-tasty-tweet)
> 
> Thanks as always to my girl [lordsanga](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordsanga) who provided invaluable softness ratings. 
> 
> Title from All My Friends by LCD Soundsystem


End file.
